The Venus vs Mars PR Quandry…

Will there always be more male managers than female in the PR Industry?

So the mission for this debate was “Women will always work in PR but never run it”.

Perhaps one of the most heated and passionate debates so far… I was against the mission. Why?

Luisa’s group argued that women will never be able to run PR, due to the primary role of a woman in culture and the constraints of society.

A recent article Grunig wrote in relation to Public relations and the paradigms of PR (I also made reference to this in my previous post), stresses the effectiveness of diversity in the PR industry, “effective organisations tend to increase the diversity in the public relations function when the diversity in their environment increases…’ However Grunig makes a point – the diversity increases only when the diversity of their environment has.

Relating this back to the motion, that ‘women will only work in PR but never run it’, is this purely dependant on the reflection of society and other industries being led by women?

Leading the way for the ladies. Lorraine Heggessey, CEO of Talkback Thames

For example – Leading Independent production company, Talkback Thames is headed by LorraineHeggessey who also used to be Controller of BBC. The head of communications at Talkback Thames is Mary O’Reilly. In fact Talkback Thames’ whole inhouse publicity team is made up of women. So what does this say about the broadcast industry? What must also be factored is the content produced by Talkback Thames. Reality television such as Britains Got Talent and The X-factor, tends to be more of a human interest viewing, usually associated with a female audience.

So is it fair to say that women in Entertainment PR will dominate the industry because they can relate to their target audience? Perhaps this is the case but then will men run other PR sectors?

Either way, yes, women will always work in PR, as will men. And surely, gender issues aside, the main point should be that either man or woman should be equally fit to perform the tasks. If they can relate to an audience and are delivering effective PR campaigns, then honestly – what does it matter. Can’t society be content with equality based on performance rather than equality for equalities sake?